


blue-gray

by winchysteria



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Depressed Derek “Nursey” Nurse, Depression, Drabble, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, but not really gen, idk im just bein sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-03 22:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14006343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchysteria/pseuds/winchysteria
Summary: I just have this sense of an image about nursey and chowder. Who are Chris and Derek right now, because it is that kind of image.





	blue-gray

It is one of those moments—washed over with pale sun and shatterproof-glass solid—into which everything collapses like a telescope.

Derek has been struggling with depression a lot in college—I mean, a lot. It’s worse than it was in high school, but it’s getting better. Incrementally.

He can’t manage anything romantic right now. It’s not possible, not with the way he struggles to sit up through class and practice and hanging out with his friends. He knows that a relationship would not be healthy, not this year, because he’s done that before. Filled a gap with another person. It didn’t go well, and he can’t do that to his recovery or to Chris.

Chris gets it. He himself is just out of a two-year relationship that didn’t end easily, so starting something serious would have been a bad idea anyway. They are best friends, and that’s rewarding enough, and it’s almost always just fine. It’s almost always perfect to be sandwiched against Derek’s side in team photos and to pinch him on the back of the neck to ruin his picture-smile. It’s almost always perfect to sit across the booth at Annie’s and shoot straw wrappers at him. It’s almost always perfect to curl up clumsily at the foot of Derek’s bunk bed, Derek somehow more graceful at the other end, while they do homework. His comforter is one of those weird, almost vinyl-y ones, a little like a sleeping bag, and Derek laughs at him when Chris’s socks slip against it and he mis-highlights something.

The sun comes in watery and vertical. Rain taps against the window at irregular intervals. This is almost always perfect, and Chris meant it when he told Derek that he cares about him whether or not they can be together-together right now. He means it now when he smiles at him, eyes crinkled, and jabs him with his foot. He knows that Derek really meant it when he said he wants this, too, but it wouldn’t be fair to start it now.

Sometimes, though, Derek reads a line from his book aloud. One of those wordy Bronte lines that makes Derek’s marble-statue face dent between the eyebrows, that sounds like the word savoring. And Chris feels the desire to reach across to him like a knife wound in his lower back, but that isn’t fair, so he twists to put his feet on the floor, elbows on knees, hands in hair above his ears.

“Hey,” Derek says, gentle. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Chris replies, a little strained. He moves his hands from his hair to his face, presses his fingertips hard over his eyelids. “Yeah, I’m just really _fucking_ in love with you.”

Derek’s stomach seizes. He knows, it’s not that he doesn’t know—he’s just not to terms with it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Can I touch you?”

Chris nods. Derek shifts forward, down the mattress, one leg still tucked under him and one reaching toward the floor.

Here’s the thing: they will be okay. They don’t know, but they will be. In those few seconds, though, as if between waking and sleeping, when Derek reaches across Chris’s back and presses his forehead into the bulk of Chris’s shoulder, that future certainty can’t offer any comfort.

“Don’t be sorry,” Chris mumbles. He means that, but he also means _I am in love with you_ again.

Derek nods into Chris’s sleeve. He means that, but he also means _me, too_.


End file.
